Some doubt may be cast on the Professor's optimism by the facts that he never saw the patient and that, on autopsy, the area around Peter's bladder was found already to be gangrenous and his sphincter muscle so swollen and so hard that only with difficulty could it be cut with a knife.
The succession was quickly settled in favor of Catherine. While Peter still drew his last breaths, a group from the Emperor's inner circle of favorites, among them Menshikov, Yaguzhinsky and Tolstoy—all of them 'new men' created by Peter, all with much to lose if the old nobility came back to power—had moved decisively to support Catherine. Guessing rightly that the Guards regiment would make the ultimate decision on the succession, they summoned these troops into the capital and massed them near the palace. There, the soldiers were reminded that Catherine had accompanied them and her husband on military campaigns. All arrears in military pay were swiftly paid in the name of the Empress. The Guards regiments were devoted to the Emperor, and Catherine was already popular with both officers and men; with these new inducements, they readily pledged their support.
Even with these precautions, the succession of the Lithuanian peasant girl, mistress and eventually wife and consort of the autocrat, was far from certain. The other serious candidate was the nine-year-old Grand Duke Peter, son of the Tsarevich Alexis. According to Russian tradition, as grandson of the dead Emperor he was the direct male heir, and the vast majority of the aristocracy, the clergy and the nation at large regarded him as the rightful successor. Through the young Grand Duke, old noble families such as the Dolgorukys and the Golitsyns hoped to restore themselves to power and reverse Peter's reforms.
The confrontation came on the night of January 27, a few hours before the Emperor's death, when the Senate and leading men of state assembled to decide the succession. Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, a member of the old nobility who had spent many years abroad and advocated a sharing of monarchical power with the aristocracy, proposed a compromise: young Peter Alexeevich should become emperor, but Catherine should be regent, assisted by the Senate. Peter Tolstoy, whose name was prominently linked with the prosecution and death of the Tsarevich Alexis and who therefore greatly feared the accession of Alexis' son, objected that rule by a minor was dangerous; the state needed a strong, experienced ruler, he insisted, and it was for this reason that the Emperor had trained and crowned his wife. When Tolstoy spoke, a number of officers of the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky Guards who had filtered into the room shouted their agreement. At the same time, a roll of drums in the courtyard below brought the statesmen to the window. Looking out into the darkness, they made out the thick ranks of the Guard drawn up around the palace. Prince Repnin, commander of the Petersburg garrison and a member of the aristocratic party, flew into a rage and demanded to know why the soldiers were there without his orders. 'What I have done, Your Excellency,' stonily replied the commander of the Guard, 'was by the express command of our sovereign lady, the Empress Catherine, whom you and I and every faithful subject are bound to obey immediate and unconditionally.' The soldiers themselves, many of them in tears, cried out, 'Our father is dead, but our mother still lives!' Under the circumstances, Apraxin's proposal 'that Her Majesty be proclaimed Autocrat with all the perogatives of her late consort' was quickly accepted.
The following morning, the forty-two-year-old widow came into the room weeping and leaning on the arm of the Duke of Holstein. She had just sobbed that she was now 'a widow and an orphan' when Apraxin knelt before her and declared the decision of the Senate. Those in the room cheered, and the acclamation was taken up by the Guardsmen outside. A manifesto issued that day announced to the empire and the world that the new Russian autocrat was a woman, the Empress Catherine I.
Peter's body was embalmed and placed on a bier in a room hung with French tapestries presented to the Emperor on his visit to Paris. For over a month, the public was allowed to file past and pay their respects. Then, on March 8, in the middle of a snowstorm, the coffin was carried to the cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Catherine walked at the head of the cortege, followed by 150 court ladies and a huge procession of courtiers, government officials, foreign envoys and military officers, all bareheaded under the snow. In the cathedral, Feofan Prokopovich preached the funeral sermon. Comparing Peter to Moses, Solomon, Samson, David and Constantine, he articulated the general disbelief that the familiar towering figure was really gone forever. 'O men of Russia,' he asked, 'what do we see? What do we do? This is Peter the Great whom we are committing to the earth!'
Catherine's reign was brief. On taking the throne, she declared that she would adhere faithfully to Peter's policies and reforms. Ever practical, she quickly consolidated her rule in the quarter where it counted most by abolishing army labor on the Ladoga Canal, keeping the soldiers paid on time, issuing new uniforms and holding numerous military reviews. She remained friendly, open and generous, so much so that court expenses quickly tripled. She put on no airs about her sudden elevation to the pinnacle of power. She spoke frequently about her common origin and extended her own good fortune to all members of her family. She found her brother, Carl Skavronsky, serving as a groom in a post station in Courland, brought him to St. Petersburg, educated him, and then created him Count Skavronsky. Her two sisters and their families were also summoned to the capital. The elder sister had married a Lithuanian peasant named Simon Heinrich, the younger, a Polish peasant, named Michael Yefim. The families were established in St. Petersburg and their names changed to Hendrikov and Yefimovsky. Catherine's generous daughter, Empress Elizabeth, created die two former peasants, her uncles, Count Hendrikov and Count Yefimovsky.
The real ruler of the state during Catherine's reign was Menshikov. On February 8, 1726, a year after her accession, a new governing body, the Supreme Privy Council, was created 'to lighten the heavy burden of government for Her Majesty.' Collectively, the six original members—Menshikov, Apraxin, Golovkin, Osterman, Tolstoy and Prince Dmitry Golitsyn— exercised near-sovereign power, including the issuing of decrees.
Menshikov dominated this body as he did the Senate, now reduced in function. He met opposition in either forum simply by rising and declaring that the views he expressed were those of the Empress.
Menshikov's policies contained elements of prudence. He understood that the weight of taxation was crushing the peasantry, and he told the Empress, 'The peasants and the army are like soul and body; you cannot have one without the other.' Accordingly, Catherine agreed to a reduction of the soul tax by one third, along with a concomitant reduction by one third in the size of the army. In addition, all arrears in the tax were canceled. Nor did Menshikov wield wholly unrestricted power. Catherine's favorite, Charles Frederick of Holstein, married the Empress' daughter Anne on May 21, 1725, and the following February, over Menshikov's opposition, he was appointed to the Supreme Privy Council.
Catherine's death, brought about by a series of chills and fevers, came only two years and three months after her accession. In November 1726, a storm backed up the Neva, forcing the Empress to flee her palace in her nightdress 'in water up to her knees.' On January 21, 1727, she participated in the ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters on the Neva ice. Afterward, with a white plume in her hat and holding a marshal's baton, she remained in the winter air for many hours to review 20,000 troops. This outing put her in bed for two months with fever and prolonged bleeding from the nose. She railed and relapsed. Near the end, she named the young Grand Duke Alexeevich as her successor, with the entire Supreme Privy Council to act as regents. Her two daughters, Anne, seventeen, now Duchess of Holstein, and Elizabeth, sixteen, were named to the council as regents.
Ironically, the accession of Peter II, the hope of the old nobility and the traditionalists, was engineered by Menshikov, the supreme example of the commoner raised from the ranks. His motives, of course, were self- preservation and further advancement. While Catherine was alive, Menshikov calculated the chances of her two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, against those of Peter and concluded that the young Grand Duke was the stronger candidate. Accordingly, he switched sides and used his formidable powers to urge the Empress along the path which eventually she took: that is, naming Peter as heir, with her daughters joining the regency council. Nor had Menshikov forgotten his own family. Before persuading Catherine to make Peter emperor, he obtained her consent to marry the eleven-year-old boy to his sixteen-year-old daughter Maria.
Menshikov's sudden reversal of loyalty startled and frightened other members of the old circle of favorites, most notably Tolstoy. The grizzled fox, now eighty-two, understood clearly that a new Emperor Peter II would inevitably reach out to settle the score with the man who had lured his father back from Italy to death. Tolstoy appealed to other members of the circle, but found limited support. Osterman had joined Menshikov, Yaguzhinsky was in Poland, the others preferred to wait and see. Only Anthony Devier, Menshikov's brother-in-law, and General Ivan Buturlin of the Guards resisted Menshikov. It was too late. Catherine was dying, and Menshikov had taken care to surround her with his own people and make it possible for others to approach. Invulnerable to attack, he now lashed out. Devier, against whom Menshikov had vowed vengeance for marrying the Serene Prince's sister, was arrested, knouted and sent to Siberia. Tolstoy was banished to an inland of whale fisheries in the White Sea, where he died in 1729 at the age of eighty-four.
Once Catherine was dead and Peter II proclaimed as emperor, Menshikov moved swiftly to reap his rewards.
